U.S. and EU export laws and UN sanctions control just a narrow slice of technology such as weapons systems or data encryption. International embargoes that cover a broader range of equipment target only a small circle of the worst actors, such as Myanmar and North Korea.

Among science/engineering/health doctorate holders, the lowest unemployment rate was among specialists in mathematics and statistics, just 1 per cent of whom were unemployed. The next best field to be in was computing and IT, whose PhDs saw just 1.1 per cent unemployment. The highest sci/eng/health unemployment was seen among US physical-sciences PhDs, 2.4 per cent of whom were jobless.

When I pointed out that they were doing it wrong—that, in fact, the correct way to end a sentence is with a period followed by a single, proud, beautiful space—the table balked. “Who says two spaces is wrong?” they wanted to know.

Typographers, that’s who. The people who study and design the typewritten word decided long ago that we should use one space, not two, between sentences.

So yesterday there was an article that glass breaks on iPhone 4 were almost twice as common as on iPhone 3GS. Of course it failed to account for the fact that iPhone 4 has twice a much glass (see article).

Be that as it may, iPhones have recently demonstrated themselves to be pretty durable. Steve owes these guys.

Armed with just a weather balloon, a video camera, and an iPhone, they basically did just that. The father-and-son team from Brooklyn managed to send their homemade spacecraft up nearly 19 miles, high into the stratosphere, bringing back perhaps the most impressive amateur space footage ever.

If this sounds like a disaster in the making, we’re in agreement, but consider this: Unlike the iPhone 3GS (or any other iPhone), the back of the iPhone 4 is also composed of glass — meaning it’s twice as likely to suffer a shatter — a variable that wasn’t computed in SquareTrade’s study. SquareTrade states that the iPhone 4 is breaking 82% more than the iPhone 3GS, but this is the sort of sleight of hand statement crafted to grab headlines.

But a fact sheet released by the administration Monday described how the regulations could prove onerous and self-defeating by, for example, impeding the export of routine equipment such as heavy brake pads widely used on fire trucks and other large vehicles just because they could also be used on an M1A1 tank.

Obama said the aim of the new system is “to build higher walls around the export of our most sensitive items while allowing the export of less critical ones under less restrictive conditions.”

The first new feature Google showed off was the ability to send text messages with your Android phone — using only your voice. This is a part of Google’s new Voice Action feature in their new version of the Voice Search application which is available starting today for Android phones. It’s awesome — but that’s not the only voice action, there are 12 of them (plus search) — and growing.

Also included is the ability to dictate email messages — and again, it actually works. Google showed this off in a live demo on stage.Here’s a list of the current voice actions:

I will do a lot of “not pretending” in this article. I won’t pretend I actually understand what memristors are or how they will change everything. But since the purpose of this blog is to explore scalability issues, I think it’s worth taking a sip or two of the memristor kool-aid and see where it might take us.

First Steve said: Flash is a bad thing. Then it appeared that H264 was the preferred thing. But all along you had Google buying up to VP8 as the real thing. Now, it seems that any video codec (open or closed) that is not controlled by Apple will become a target.

Roy sent his note to what is believed to be Steve Jobs’ email address – sjobs@apple.com – and three hours later, he received a reply.

“All video codecs are covered by patents,” read the reply. “A patent pool is being assembled to go after Theora and other ‘open source’ codecs now. Unfortunately, just because something is open source, it doesn’t mean or guarantee that it doesn’t infringe on others patents. An open standard is different from being royalty free or open source.”